Guys as most of you know AMD will release a new driver real soon, this one coming with Mantle support. I just heard that the driver is delayed a bit more so it likely won't be today. However we are allowed to share some stuff with you guys. The upcoming 14.1 Beta driver will receive many improvements. Two important ones though, read more after the break.

Frame pacing (Frame latency)

The first being that AMD Catalyst 14.1 is the “phase 2” frame pacing driver they announced in October of last year. It enables frame pacing support in DX10 and DX11 applications on resolutions higher than 1600p with products that don’t feature AMDs XDMA technology. Example products include the HD 7000 Series, or the R9 280X and R9 270X GPU. This driver also helps improve the frame pacing in AMD Dual Graphics configurations, such as the new “Kaveri” APU paired with an AMD Radeon R7 250 GPU! We encourage you and your readers to test our initial implementation, and provide feedback as you’re able.

HSA

The upcoming catalyst driver is also AMD’s first HSA-enabled graphics driver, which allows the GPU and CPU silicon of the new “Kaveri” APU to intelligently cooperate for improved performance. Supporting applications for testing include Libre Office v4.2.0.1+ and Corel AfterShot Pro v1.2.0.6+, with many more to come soon.

Mantle ready

Obviously AMD will launch the driver with Mantle support, DICE will rool out an update today that should allow Mantle compatibility.

Here's the thing, you've been seeing a lot of speculation (intentionally spread by AMD) with 40% performance gains. That is both true and not. For high-end systems with fast CPUs it's not, you will definitely see gains in performandce. But Mantle helps where the CPU is limited, and that is great news for slower CPU products like say Kaveri. Mantle is an incredibly powerful tool for alleviating CPU bottlenecks--such as API overhead or inefficient multi-threading--so systems with entry-level, mid-range, or otherwise modestly-priced processors stand to see the biggest gain.

Average uplift for 1080p: 13.28% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)

Average uplift for 1600p: 11.35% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)

In reality you'll be GPU limited extremely fast, everybody with say a mid-range GPU and normal processor is GPU limited. However of you have a more low-end setup, that's gonna kick ass in extra performance. All of the sudden APUs make much more sense, if the software supports Mantle of course. That's all I can share right now.

Below a White paper primer on Mantle (courtesy of AMD):

Mantle has been many years in the making by AMD, but we were not alone in this effort! Mantle was also directly shaped by the input we received from the greater game development community that has long sought a low-level graphics API for PCs. We worked shoulder-to-shoulder with developers like DICE and Oxide Games to create Mantle in the image of their needs: a streamlined, robust, efficient API for modern graphics work. In fact, Mantle is the very first API designed directly by game developers for their modern craft! At the simplest level, Mantle is an Application Programming Interface (API), or a language that game developers can use to write code that creates the beautiful graphics on your screen. In its current iteration, the Mantle API uniquely leverages the hardware in the Graphics Core Next architecture (GCN) of modern AMD Radeon. GPUs for peak performance. More broadly, Mantle is functionally similar to DirectXR and OpenGL, but Mantle is different in that it was purpose-built as a lower level API. By ¡§lower level, it ¡s meant that the language of Mantle more closely matches the way modern graphics architectures (like AMD¡¦s own GCN) are designed to execute code. The primary benefit of a lower level API is a reduction in software bottlenecks, such as the time a GPU and CPU must spend translating/understanding/reorganizing code on-the-fly before it can be executed and presented to the user as graphics. Mantle comes in contrast to the ¡§high level API,¡¨ which offers broader compatibility with multiple GPU architectures, but does so at the expense of lower performance and efficiency.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF MANTLEFirst and foremost, Mantle is primarily designed to improve performance in scenarios where the CPU is the limiting factor (so-called ¡§CPU-bound¡¨ cases); CPU-bound scenarios are legion in gaming, as existing APIs have heavy validation overhead, along with difficulty scaling out to multiple CPU cores. In addressing this common problem, Mantle enables a pronounced improvement for the majority of global PC gamers that have entry-level and mid-range processors. Some of the techniques to achieve this include:

In turn, Mantle makes less of an impact in cases where high resolutions and ¡§maximum detail¡¨ settings are used, as these settings are likely to be maximally taxing GPU resources in a manner that is more difficult to improve at the API level (so-called ¡§GPU-bound¡¨ scenarios). While Mantle provides some built-in features to improve GPU-bound performance, gains in these cases are largely dependent on how well Mantle features and optimizations are being utilized by the developer.

Some of those features include:

Reduction of command buffers submissions

Explicit control of resource compression, expands and synchronizations

Asynchronous compute queue for overlapping of compute and graphics workloads

Data formats optimizations via flexible buffer/image access

Advanced Anti-Aliasing features for MSAA/EQAA optimizations

It¡¦s also prudent to note that Mantle is still in the beta phase and may not reflect the full performance we might be able to achieve through the optimization time we¡¦ll be investing in the months ahead. And, as developers are still familiarizing themselves with Mantle and its relationship to Graphics Core Next, they may not have capitalized on all available opportunities for optimizations¡Xbut that will come with time.

One such optimization is the approach to multi-GPU performance scaling, which now rests in the hands of the game developer in the Mantle ecosystem. Developer control of multi-GPU performance empowers them to design an optimal multi-GPU codebase that perfectly matches the approach their rendering engine takes to graphics. Battlefield 4 is currently enabled with multi-GPU capabilities on Mantle, but the Oxide Games StarSwarm demo will be enabled with these capabilities in a later build.

THE ROAD AHEADThroughout the months that have followed our October unveiling of Mantle, you have been patient and kind to us as the Mantle consortium labored to make the first release the best it could possibly be. Concurrently, your support and coverage have been real and personal encouragement for every person working on the API. While we can never truly repay your kindness with a piece of software, we hope that it goes into the world with no uncertain amount of gratitude from us. We thank you so very deeply for your support, and vow to bring an even more sensational experience in the months ahead!

AMD Mantle Update For Battlefield 4 Delayed ? - 01/28/2014 01:25 PM
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Rebellion pursues AMD Mantle - 11/22/2013 08:20 PM
Rebellion is the latest game developer to join the AMD Mantle front. The company said they're working with AMD to add Mantle support to Asura, their in-house game engine. We are proud to announce tha...

AMD Mantle could get you 20% more performance - 11/15/2013 09:06 AM
Says Johan Andersson from DICE. Andersson said creating a Mantle version of the Frostbite 3 engine took them about two months to complete. Mantle support will be added by an update in late Decembe...

AMD Mantle Graphics API Adopted by Various Developers - 11/04/2013 04:42 PM
AMD today announced three new game developer partnerships for Mantle, its highly acclaimed, groundbreaking graphics API. Cloud Imperium Games, Eidos-Montréal, a part of the Square Enix Group, and Oxi...

#4753900 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:16 AM
Well if true this dumbass was right

Bogeyx
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#4753901 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:18 AM
Well still not a bad thing, but not what i wanted to hear.

PhazeDelta1
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#4753902 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:18 AM
Well this is definitely good news for people with low to mid end PCs

Spets
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#4753904 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:19 AM
So a small percentage increase on mainstream desktop CPU's, OpenGL looks more promising.
Laptops will have a nice benefit at least.
Hopefully Microsoft will still push for less overhead after Mantle.

Angushades
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#4753907 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:23 AM
LOL I knew it . Fail AMD , up to 40%.... NOT!! lol lol lol. That company is a joke. Oh no where is my 40% on my 290X.....Just trolling guy. BTW my brother owns a X290 on water.

DarkKnightDude
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#4753911 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:32 AM

LOL I knew it . Fail AMD , up to 40%.... NOT!! lol lol lol. That company is a joke. Oh no where is my 40% on my 290X.....Just trolling guy. BTW my brother owns a X290 on water.

Its up to 40% on a 290, assuming your cpu is not high end. Its apparently 15% for those i7 4700s.

Hell with mantle one could save money on a cpu and buy a more expensive video card.

Hilbert Hagedoorn
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#4753914 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:35 AM
It might not be what many expected, as most Guru3D.com readers have high end GPU bound systems. But if you get 15% on a 290 with a i7 4700 series or say AMD FX processor, then what is there to complain about ?

Mantle is free, and kind of extra performance whatever the digit is, is a free plus.

Robbo9999
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#4753920 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:39 AM
So a small percentage increase on mainstream desktop CPU's, OpenGL looks more promising.
Laptops will have a nice benefit at least.
Hopefully Microsoft will still push for less overhead after Mantle.

Yeah, laptops with AMD CPUs will benefit. But gaming laptops won't benfit too much because they're mostly GPU limited, the Mobile Core i7 CPU's from Sandybridge up are really rather good, and they remove any CPU bottlenecks already in most games. GPUs are the main weak link with gaming, or even non-gaming laptops.

I don't think Mantle is that much to get excited about, thought it was going to be better than this. Although, if future games really start to push the limits of CPU's then Mantle could start coming into it's own then!

mR Yellow
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#4753922 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:43 AM
It might not be what many expected, as most Guru3D.com readers have high end GPU bound systems. But if you get 15% on a 290 with a i7 4700 series or say AMD FX processor, then what is there to complain about ?

Mantle is free, and kind of extra performance whatever the digit is, is a free plus.

True, plus the real gains will be seen with engines implementing Mantle from the start and not being patched in afterwards.

Spets
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#4753927 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:48 AM

Its apparently 15% for those i7 4700s.

Except that 13% at 1080p is an average of four CPU's:

Average uplift for 1080p: 13.28% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)

The A10 would have brought that average up.
On the i7 it's less than 3% on an i5 it'll probably only be around 4-5%

#4753934 Posted on: 01/30/2014 10:53 AM
Damn, I was wanting to see everyone max the bf4 res slider as well.
so if you have an uber rig and can get the res slider to say 150%, wonder how much extra mantle will be able to give ..175%?
is that even too enthusiastic?

Deathchild
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#4753941 Posted on: 01/30/2014 11:01 AM
Damn, I was wanting to see everyone max the bf4 res slider as well.
so if you have an uber rig and can get the res slider to say 150%, wonder how much extra mantle will be able to give ..175%?
is that even too enthusiastic?

lol yeah I was hoping on that too, increasing the res slider.

Well, at least we get something, 13-15% is good. In mantle games it will give AMD cards the upper hand lol. It gives game developers free reign to develop VERY CPU heavy games!! .. Which is super awesome. Opens up a whole new world tbh.

Wormwood
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#4753960 Posted on: 01/30/2014 11:19 AM
It's not groundbreaking but it is a step up which is always good.